Did we mention Richard Desmond is a pornographer?

The idea that giving teachers pencil cases and brochures, at their own request, is “brainwashing” by the EU (Express, 18 January) is nonsense. The notion that a video published on our website for two years is part of some secret conspiracy is absurd. Sadly, there is a great deal of misinformation about the EU in the UK, though we tend to avoid hyperbolic terms like “brainwashing”. But it does not come from the European Commission. Our Euromyths website, where the Express features frequently, provides hundreds of examples.

Mark English
Head of Media, European Commission Representation in the UK

This is in response to an Express article (complete with obligatory quote from the Taxpayers Alliance and UKIP) and an editorial.

BRITAIN faces a £100million bill because a bizarre new EU regulation will order supermarkets to turn down the temperature on their refrigerators.

Eurocrats are demanding that stores’ cold storage areas are chilled by a further three degrees to “improve” food safety.

But the order to reset thermostats in stock rooms, warehouses, and delivery vans to 2C (36F) has angered retailers and MPs.

They say it will cost up to £100million to implement and increase energy consumption without making food any safer.

As usual, there are no new regulations, only a fact finding exercise which, according to the EU Commission was prompted by some member states and not bored beaurocrats looking for something to meddle with…

Letter to the Editor of the Daily Express, sent on 12th December 2011

Dear Sirs,

Contrary to claims in your article, “Barmy EU ‘colder fridges’ order will cost us £100m”, 12 December 2011, there are no new EU regulations ordering supermarkets to turn down fridge temperatures. The facts are less chilling.

EU member states have asked the Commission to look into the fact that supermarkets’ own meat cutting plants are not covered by the same hygiene regulations as independent plants, even though they often process more meat.

So the Commission is carrying out a fact finding exercise, to make sure consumers are properly protected.

No changes have been proposed and none could enter into force without full scrutiny by MEPs and national ministers.

Yours faithfully

Mark English
Head of Media
European Commission Representation in the UK

Wikipedia has the following diagram showing how the jurisdiction of various European bodies overlaps*, as well as a few extra bits**:

As you can see there is a clear overlap between the EU and CoE/ECtHR – in fact to join the EU you must be a member of the CoE/ECtHR – but it is clear that there is a significant difference between the two, even when simply looking at the members of each.

The main difference is that one is more trade-related; one more co-operation related.

The EU was set up in 1958 by various western European countries, but not the UK (which created the European Free Trade Association in response), to help them trade with each other. In fact, the basic idea of the EU is to create an economic bloc between various countries via a single internal market.

The gang behind The-Sun-Lies, Mailwatch, Expresswatch and numerous other media watching blogs are having Their second annual Media Watch Meetup. The first one, held in August just gone was such a success they couldn’t wait another twelve months so it’s being held in a couple of weeks.

Do come along for a drink or two and a chat about the papers, blogging or just to say hello. Best of all it’s free (apart from the beer which you’ll have to pay for yourself. We’re not *that* nice). There’s no entrance fee and you won’t need to buy anyone a beer to gain access to any of our top bloggers and you can stay as long as you want or until the pub kicks us all out. You can just turn up or or go to the Facebook event page and let us know to expect you.

A small group of liberal elitists behind The Sun: Tabloid Lies, Mail Watch, Express Watch and other personal attacks on common sense and decency will be meeting for a London-centric Chardonnay-quaffing* session at The Monarch in Camden at 2:30pm on Saturday 6th August, 2011.

Members of the public are invited to attend, provided they are not operating under the constraints of an imaginary legal device.

Those attending may be exposed to furtive whispers about media standards as a spectacle, media-watching as a sport, and other aspects of the vast left wing conspiracy to impose accuracy and accountability on a self-regulated system that’s doing just fine without our incessant meddling.

[*There may be some drinking of popular colas and lager beer, purely for the sake of appearances, should a photo opportunity arise. PS – bring a camera.]

Media Watch Meet-up

2:30pm
Saturday
6th August 2011
The Monarch in Camden:
http://www.monarchbar.com/contact/

The following is an extract from a letter written by Richard Peppiatt (to proprietor Richard Desmond) upon his resignation from the Daily Star. It earns mention here because Richard Desmond also owns the Daily Express. And a whole lot of porn channels, which we may have mentioned once or twice before now.

I nearly walked out last summer when the Daily Star got all flushed about taxpayer-funded Muslim-only loos.

A newsworthy tale were said toilets Muslim-only. Or taxpayer-funded. Undeterred by the nuisance of truth, we omitted a few facts, plucked a couple of quotes, and suddenly anyone would think a Rochdale shopping centre had hired Osama Bin Laden to stand by the taps, handing out paper towels.

I was personally tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our postmodern victory in “blocking” the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil.

Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamaphobia stopped there. Many a morning I’ve hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals.

It’s well worth reading the entire letter (and the delightful response from his former employers underneath, which tells you exactly the kind of people of people they are, just in case the letter isn’t enough for you).

Northern and Shell, the publishers of the Daily Express and other Desmond publications, have withdrawn (or been excluded, depending on who’s talking) from the system of self regulation run by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The Press Complaints Commission has today responded to the news that Northern & Shell is withdrawing its subscription to the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBof) and, accordingly, its financial support for the system of press self-regulation. To preserve its independence, the PCC does not involve itself directly in obtaining funding from publishers. However, a refusal to support the self-regulatory system financially means that a 7newspaper publisher effectively withdraws from the PCC’s formal jurisdiction, which the PCC considers regrettable.

So the first to suffer will, of course, be members of the public who are upset by articles in titles such as the Daily Express and Daily Star.

If they contact the PCC in future they may well be given assistance in how to compose a complaint letter to send direct to the offending paper. But they will be on their own after that.

If Desmond’s editors choose to ignore complaints altogether, nothing can be done for the complainant.

Which suits Desmond and his papers just fine. Why Desmond has decided to leave the self regulatory system is not known apart from getting fed up with how often his publications are up for adjudication. Is it any surprise when Desmond and his papers have such a loose grasp of the truth?

As for the industry itself, has self regulation been shaken to it’s foundation? There is the loss of income for the PCC. It’s an unknown amount as the subscriptions paid by the national press is kept a secret. It may have an impact, but how much, is unknown. The system may be able to carry on as it is as the newspaper and magazine industry groups have given their support to the PCC, to try and show that self regulation isn’t dead…

Clive Milner, chairman of the Newspaper Publishers Association, representing national newspapers, said: “The PCC exists to ensure national newspapers conform to clear editorial standards which are independently regulated. All NPA members are committed to upholding this system of press self-regulation which protects and serves members of the public so effectively and maintains a free, responsible press.”

As long as the veneer of regulation looks ok, then the show can carry on.. until more of the err, less scrupulous publishers decide that they too don’t need the hassle of being asked where they want to put apologies, if they bother at all. If that happens, then the whole thing falls apart as the only way to get redress would be to be armed with a lawyer or five.

The Media Standards Trust, the people behind amongst other things Journalisted and campaigns for better regulation of the press, has asked some open questions of all the parties involved, Northern & Shell, The PCC and the Press Board of Finance (PressBoF), which if answered may give a better idea as to where press regulation in this country will go.

The article, written by Lucy Johnston, the Sunday Express’ Health Editor, states that:

UP to a million under-fives have been inoculated against the flu virus with a controversial vaccine containing poisonous mercury.

Inquiries by the Sunday Express reveal it contains a preservative made with a form of mercury that was phased out of childhood vaccines in 2004 after fears about its safety.

The preservative, called thimerosal, has been linked with autism and developmental disorders in children and was withdrawn from childhood vaccines in the United States and parts of Europe 10 years ago.

The story seems to be based around comments made by Dr Richard Halvorsen:

Dr Richard Halvorsen, author of the book, The Truth About Vaccines, said: “Thimerosal is an extremely toxic substance and known poison to the brain.

“There is enough convincing evidence linking thimerosal with developmental disorders and learning problems in individual children to warrant its removal from any childhood vaccine.

For a bit of context, it’s worth pointing out that Dr Halvorsen describes himself on his website as being “trained in acupuncture and homeopathy”.

And for a bit more context, it’s worth mentioning that Lucy Johnston, the author of today’s article, was also responsible for the following stories: “Jab ‘As Deadly As The Cancer'”, “Doctor’s MMR fears”, “Exclusive: Experts Cast Doubt On Claim For ‘Wonder’ Cancer Jabs”, “Children ‘Used As Guinea Pigs For Vaccines’”, “Dangers Of MMR Jab ‘Covered Up’”, “Teenage Girls Sue Over Cancer Jab”, “Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme”, “Suicides ‘Linked To Phone Masts” and many more besides.

Vaccine scare stories are clearly her “thing”.

Although the article includes several statements dismissing the claim that thimerosal poses a danger to children, the article is clearly weighted in the opposite direction.

No mention is made of the lack of evidence for a health risk until the fifth paragraph, by which time we’ve already been told that the vaccine contains “poisonous mercury” and that it’s “linked with autism and developmental disorders in children”. Concerned parents who only want to do right by their children will most likely have already made up their minds about the vaccine.

This is the kind of journalism that causes real harm. Certain vaccines or medications, like thimerosal or the MMR jab, may well be “controversial”, but such articles are almost always unwilling to trust the science over the fears of a few “experts”.

As the Express say at the end of their article:

[B]oth the Medicines Healthcare Regulatory Agency and the Department of Health insist there is no evidence of harm from vaccines containing thimerosal.

Furthermore, a quick trip to Wikipedia shows that the link between thimerosal and autism has been rejected by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Medical Toxicology, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the European Medicines Agency.

Faced with overwhelming rejection of the thimerosal-autism link by the scientific community, the Express’ article should have been far more careful not to scare parents. They should have mentioned straight away that the science simply doesn’t back-up Dr Halvorsen’s claim.

They clearly value selling papers more highly than fair and reasonable journalism.

It’s been quite a tough competition this month. I actually thought I might have found a winner on October 31st, so there was a lot of catching up to do from all the papers in the following weeks. The British tabloid press were well up for it though.

Your story, and the campaign built around it, has beaten off competition from all the low-rent tabloids to win the second ever 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award, presented by me (5cc) over at Five Chinese Crackers.

Put on the pointy party hat and get blowing on the curly noisemakers!

Here’s why your story made you the proud owner of a crap drawing of a trophy:

You sound surprised that 99% of a group made up chiefly of readers of a rabidly anti-EU tabloid that provides a constant drip of stories about things like:

The EU banning the sale of a dozen eggs (which was rubbish)

The EU banning the sale of milk jugs (which was rubbish)

The EU wanting to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain (which was – hey, I’ve spotted a pattern here!)

would want to get out of the EU.

I mean, they would only have had stories like these and front-page headlines like ‘EU is on another planet’ (which was – you guessed it!), ‘EU hammers our pensions’ and ‘Get Britain Out Of Europe’ to lead them to the desired conclusion.

The only other clues as to the result would have been:

90% and above of Express readers regularly agree with the paper’s editorial line in phone polls

An identical phone poll back in 2008 showed that 95% wanted to leave the EU

You must have been biting your fingernails, waiting for the results to come in.

Although the headline is a little ambigious with its use of the word ‘you’, the story itself says:

…99 per cent of people agree we should quit the European Union.

Really? 99% of people? Or 99% of people prepared to call a premium rate phone number in a self-selecting poll carried out by an anti-EU tabloid? A less biased ipsos mori poll earlier in the year showed that only 47% of people wanted to withdraw. But of course, you already know that, since you reported on it yourself.

You actually said:

As the shockwaves reverberated around Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg, voters all over the UK backed our crusade to regain Britain’s national independence

That’s classy, that. Shockwaves reverberated! I’m sure they’d only just died down after the results came in from the poll about where bears do their poos.

The stunt – sorry, crusade – is sure to be a game changer. It sets you apart from the other tabloids, which are uniformly pro…oh, hang on! Still, at least now when readers see Express stories you’ve churned from the Telegraph about the EU ruling that all our firstborns should be fed to the reanimated corpse of Hitler, there’ll be a little logo next to them.

Finally, I would like to set all sarcasm aside and thank you for choosing a crusade that aligns you with the least objectionable of our fringe far-right parties. The BNP have already said:

Today the Daily Express has published an article vindicating all that the BNP has ever said about the strain being put upon the infrastructure of Britain by continuing to permit unfettered mass immigration. Thank you, Daily Express – it’s good to see that you have finally caught up with us.

Plus, they’re currently not your friends because they say you’ve stolen their idea about halting foreign aid. Given your paper’s approach to the issues the BNP hold dear, I dread to think what other crusades you could have chosen. [I’d written a funny here about Muslims and work camps, but I deleted it for fear of giving you ideas].

So, congratulations! You’ve won November’s 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award and the chance to win the 2011 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award, which I will present to the winner of most monthly awards between October 2010 and December 2011.

I’ll be posting the text of this email over at Five Chinese Crackers. If you’d like to make an acceptance comment or anything, please reply to this email and I’ll publish it there.

Cheers then!

5cc

So, there it is then. That’s November’s winner. Check back on the last Saturday of December for next month’s winner. Will it involve Winterval?

If you come across any contenders, feel free to email me at fivechinesecrackers [at] gmail [dot] com, or DM me on twitter at @5ChinCrack and they’ll be mashed into the mix!